Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse?



What We Owe The Future is available now — you can get it wherever you get your (audio)books or here:  https://www.amazon.com/What-Owe-Future-William-MacAskill/dp/1541618629
This video was sponsored by the author, Will MacAskill. Thanks a lot for the support.

Sources & further reading:
https://sites.google.com/view/sources-civilization-collapse/

At its height, the Roman Empire was home to about 30 % of the world’s population, and in many ways the pinnacle of human advancement. Rome became the first city in history to reach one million inhabitants and was a center of technological, legal, and economic progress. An empire impossible to topple, stable and rich and powerful.
Until it wasn’t anymore. First slowly then suddenly, the most powerful civilization on earth collapsed. If this is how it has been over the ages, what about us today? Will we lose our industrial technology, and with that our greatest achievements, from one dollar pizza to smartphones or laser eye surgery? Will all this go away too?

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46 thoughts on “Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse?”

  1. Presenting MacAskill's arguments as "counterintuitive" and then describes some of the most based outlooks of our actions in the present. Really goes to show the circling-the-drain zeitgeist we're facing these days and Kurzgesagt's real position on the question of of our civilization will fall.

    Reply
  2. I will for sure die slowly and miserably in a highly likely global catastrophe…together with the ones I love dearly… Watching them suffer with me without any chance of saving them will be such a cruciating pain that suicide, while taking them together with me, will be the only way out. And then a few centruies later, humanity will continue its journey. Such a relief to hear it. Thanks Kurzgesagt…

    Reply
  3. "did we manage to unlock a new fear for you?"
    No I was born in 2001, 2 months later 9/11 happened, then america invaded iraq, followed by disaster after disaster. BEEN seen this coming

    Reply
  4. Seems like the only time community's come together now is after Natural disasters or war. Without an immediate threat or shared suffering it seems we as a society are hell bent on hating each other.

    Reply
  5. This channel takes in loads of cash from a variety of organizations that seek to collapse the West in favor of global neofeudalism and communism. For example, this channel took in roughly $500,000 worth of donations from the Gates foundation year over year for roughly the past five consecutive years.

    Reply
  6. Holy shit you guys talk about "recovery" just in terms of population numbers.
    WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY DO YOU WANT THAT MUCH TO CONVERT ALL OF EARTH'S BIOMASS INTO HUMANS?
    When the collapse comes, we should accept it and say good bye to modernity, high tech, industry tech, and SPECIALLY, crazy high human numbers. Let us be just hundreds of thousands again, not billions. This large numbers aren't good for nothing.

    Reply
  7. We could rebuild our civilisation over an evolutionary timescale – so basically everyone in the present still gets fucked. This vid is weaker than the others: they went over historical facts we already knew then in some fantasy ideal assumed the people left over were literate, capable agricultural farmers who could also 'relearn science'.

    Reply
  8. 5:20 Let’s not forget about Nagasaki. We gave Japan a chance to surrender, they refused, so we blasted them again. And yes, they did recover. Although I suspect their recovery was incomplete.

    Reply
  9. videos like this are why i no longer trust kurzgesagt as a voice in the scientific community. playing down the impact of climate change and our personal responsibility in its mitigation (including orienting our lives around the fight rather than tossing money at orgs to assuage our consciences, per the bullshit "effective altruism" theory) is pathetic. i hope you're ashamed of selling out like this, because you should be.

    Reply
  10. So what you are saying is, in order to properly end civilizations, for extended evolutionary time, we need to burn all books, destroy all power generating machinery and deploy a virus that kills all plant life. Also, the drunken teenage comparison, close, but not quite, because some (actually many) teenagers just want to watch the world burn, deliberately.

    Reply

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